


i don’t think it’s safe to turn out the nightlight

by honeykaspbrak



Series: my life’s now a tragedy [2]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Bipolar Disorder, Bisexual Carl Gallagher, Carl-centric, Depressed Carl, Domesticity, Drinking, Feelings, Gen, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Sad, Self Harm, Underage Drinking, carl can’t fucking sleep, carl is my favorite can you tell, carl’s going through some bad shit, he and the milkovich siblings need each other, so is mandy, someone help him please :(, the aftermath of ian’s break
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-05
Updated: 2018-07-05
Packaged: 2019-06-05 13:40:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15171902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeykaspbrak/pseuds/honeykaspbrak
Summary: mandy breathes out, noisy and scared. carl feels awful in every sense of the word. feels like he might vomit. he can tell mandy and mickey are having a frantic eye conversation over his head.step right up to another gallagher breakdown in the milkovich house! nothing new here!





	i don’t think it’s safe to turn out the nightlight

**Author's Note:**

> first, TRIGGER WARNING: possible self harm/suicidal ideation. stay safe!
> 
> this is a sequel to my other work “i lost my voice , you lost your mind” so read that first! i hope you enjoy <3
> 
> again, the title is from the song “beacon hill”.

carl hasn’t been back to school since ian’s meltdown. mickey keeps calling it a “psychotic break”, because he talked to some therapist over the phone and that’s what she said it was, officially, but that wording scares carl bad. it sounds so horror movie, so be-all-end-all, and carl cannot think that it’s any of that. it isn’t that, it’s his _brother_.

anyhow, carl has all but dropped out, fielding angry texts from fiona and lip about the school’s admin calling home about his absences on top of absences. it’s not as if he was going before, not consistently, but now he’s so worried that the second he sets foot outside of the milkovich house everything will come crashing down again that he hasn’t left since that night he screamed at ian from the bedroom floor. 

he’s been sleeping in mandy’s bed with her. it’s because every night he tried to crash on the couch alone he’d wake up sobbing, the image of ian unmoving on that bed tearing through his mind. and mandy is good, good in a way that carl feels awful for never recognizing before. she came home for ian, for her brother, and now for carl, letting him into her life like another brother in a life already too full of them. she looked at him with her huge, sad eyes and lead him quietly down the hall, away from the living room where he woke up mid panic attack. she tucked him into her bed, warm and soft and smelling comfortingly girly. she rubs his back when he wakes up now, which is happening less with someone else in the bed with him. less with ian getting up more and even sitting out on the porch with mickey some mornings, cup of coffee cradled in his spindly hands. 

but it isn’t over. as much as mickey wants to insist that ian’s recovered, he hasn’t. and he won’t, not without help. carl saw this, the low-low and the resulting return to semi-normality, too many times with monica to ignore it. she always got manic again. she always crashed again. and mickey doesn’t understand (doesn’t want to understand) that that will happen to ian too. 

it’s all unexplainably _weird_. the living at the milkovich’s, the sleeping in mandy’s bed, the seeing mickey practically spoon-feeding his brother, the acute silence of the house, as if everyone feels like raising their voices above a whisper could have disastrous consequences. 

carl goes from cold to hot at the drop of a hat, feels sick in his stomach and his head all the time. can’t fall asleep, hasn’t been eating much other than coffee with brandy splashed in and dry toast when mandy forces slices of it on him. it’s a vague _offness_ that frightens him. he knew he’d go crazy, that seemed inevitable. but now it feels like it’s happening in timelaspse, like he can feel his mind coming undone stitch by popped stitch. 

the most unsettling part of it all is watching how mickey acts around ian. he is scrappy south side through and through and carl has never seen him be careful with his brother. loving, yes, sweet, occasionally, but never _careful_ , like ian is porcelain that’s set too close to the edge of a coffee table. but that’s how carl feels around him too. like one wrong move, one heavy breath, could send him shattering again with them scrambling to pick up the pieces. 

—

carl wakes up to light filling mandy’s room, her arm thrown over his side as she snores softly behind him. he dislodges himself as smoothly as he can to avoid disrupting her, sliding out from under the covers and onto the cold floor with bare feet. he wonders vaguely whether anyone’s paid the heating bill, wouldn’t be surprised if it’d slipped through the cracks with everything else that’s been going on. 

he catches his reflection in the mirror that mandy has propped up on her desk, the edges cluttered with photos (carl sees her and ian, arms around each other, laughing, and his heart twists in his chest) and ticket stubs. he looks wrecked, hair too long and unwashed, stringy locks falling into his eyes, acne of his chin. he’s wearing basketball shorts that he thinks are mickey’s and a hole-y tee with discolored armpits. he feels grimy and trapped and too exhausted to do anything about it. 

the door creaks loud when he pushes it open but mandy only sighs and rolls over. carl smiles a little, back at her in the bed. he doesn’t know how he could live two blocks away from someone like her his entire life and only now realize that she’s an ethereal being in a bruised body that’s carved out with eyeliner and choppy bangs. he knows she was (is?) ian’s best friend. he knows lip dated her for a couple of years before leaving for college. he sees why they liked (love?) her so much. 

the gallaghers and the milkovichs, he thinks. somehow they’ve all become tightly tangled threads in the same tapestry. 

he creeps down the hallway in sock feet. it must still be early enough, because the house is settled and quiet and there’s no coffee or cannabis smell in the air yet. the kitchen is empty, countertops littered with crusty plates, takeout boxes, and beer cans. no one’s felt much like cleaning up. 

carl forces the window over the sink open with his elbow, hoping to clear the mustiness out of the air before the day gets too warm. he puts water for coffee on the stove in the rusting kettle, dumps the takeout that’s beyond salvation in the trash and puts the rest back in the noisily running fridge. he’s tired, cloudy-headed. 

he doesn’t know how long he can sustain feeling this way. as if he’s walking through dense, cold fog that clings to his skin and stifles his breath. 

he washes every dish on the countertops to try to push down the emotion that crawls up his spine.

his hands shake until a white ceramic plate crusted with old peanut butter slips from his fingers and shatters at the bottom of the stained sink. 

—

mandy finds carl curled up on the kitchen floor with blood running down his hands. her first words are breathless, strangled: _holy fuck_ and the next are thick with tears: _did you do this on purpose?_

carl can’t remember. there’s blood on the shorts that aren’t even his. 

“i’m sorry.” he croaks, because, fuck, they’re out of laundry soap and mickey will be pissed off if carl can’t wash the stains out of these. 

_”mickey!”_ mandy yells, her hands closing over carl’s as if she can seal the cuts off like that. her eyes are somehow both terrified-wild and still half asleep. she’s gorgeous, carl thinks. the tile floor is very cold underneath him. 

“mickey!” she yells again. her voice is steady enough and carl appreciates that. his own voice is wont to shake like a tree in a hurricane. “mick, kitchen, _it’s an emergency!_ ”

mandy stretches out a thin, pale arm (she has a tattoo on her inner tricep that must be new-ish, delicate lilacs twisting through each other), snagging the dish towel that hangs on the handle of the stove. she’s breathing fast, breathing like mickey was that first afternoon ian wouldn’t get out of bed. she wraps it around carl’s hands, tugs it secure and tight, and carl thinks it’s probably to cover the blood as much as it is to staunch it. 

she’s about to yell again, he can see it in her face, but then mickey’s footsteps are sounding out on the floorboards in the hallway. 

“this better be good, mands, i was-“ he comes up cold when his eyes lock with carl’s. “ _fuck_. oh, fuck”

mickey’s knees hit the ground so he’s crouching next to mandy, panic on his face that carl can’t believe he’s inflicted. his hands don’t hurt so much, or he doesn’t feel them, but he feels the crush of worrying these two. fuck. 

“i’m sorry.” carl says again. there’s nothing else. 

“shit, holy shit, did he-?” mickey turns to mandy and they look so _alike_ all of a sudden that it almost makes carl smile. 

“i don’t know.” mandy says, and her voice is shaking now. as if, because mickey is here, she can let down her facade of bravery. carl wants to reach out to her, tell her it’ll be okay, but his hands are still pinned under the towel that is now soaked through red in places. “i heard a crash and i found him like this, i...” she trails off. she does that, carl’s noticed. doesn’t finish sentences. ian did that too, back when he told stories and jokes instead of talking in three-word fragments. _ian._

“where’s... where’s my brother?” carl asks. he feels a little funny. like he’s a television intercepting static. mickey’s brows shoot together in a caricature of distress and carl feels awful, not for the first time, that the most fucked-up gallaghers have taken over his life and his home. 

“he’s, ah, sleeping. still sleeping.” always sleeping. “he’s okay, though. it’s still early.” it’s like mickey knows what carl was thinking. 

“okay.” carl’s voice sounds strange when it hits his ears. 

“carl...” mandy murmurs, “fuck, carl. are you okay?” she brushes a strand of hair off his forehead. he just wants to go back to bed. mickey is standing, now, rooting around in junk drawers with a smoke that he’s procured out of thin air hanging from his mouth. it might be carl’s imagination, but his movements look jerky, like he’s trembling. he turns back to mandy. 

“uh huh. i, um, i dropped a...” the word takes too long to come to him, “...plate. in the sink. i’m sorry.”

“oh, carl, hey. it’s fine. don’t worry about it, silly. it’s okay.” her eyes are big and glossy as her hand cups carl’s cheek. he wants to sleep. 

“ah! here we go.” mickey sinks back to the floor with a mess of gauze and a roll of scotch tape. 

“that’s what you’re gonna use?” mandy takes the gauze from him, inspecting it. 

“best we have, okay.” mickey puffs the cigarette then holds it up to carl’s mouth. he takes it between his lips, tries to focus on nothing but the smoke in his chest. 

“okay, i’m gonna make sure there’s no glass in your hands, alright?” mandy is good with people, carl thinks. she has a nice voice. soothing. she unwraps the towel, which makes carl flinch. his hands sting now. “i’m sorry, i’m sorry, stay still.” 

she cleans his cuts with a clean towel and water from the sink. mickey is pacing in the kitchen, stops only to pour mugs of coffee for all three of them, adds a shot of liquor to each. mandy motions for the bottle. 

“what?” carl agrees with mickey’s sentiment. 

“alcohol disinfects.” she says, matter of fact. 

“you’re gonna use my liquor for... something other than drinking?” mickey raises an eyebrow. 

“mick, don’t be an asshole. i don’t want this getting infected.” he shrugs, relenting, and hands her the bottle. 

it hurts like hell when she dabs the alcohol on, burns and smells awful, but once carl’s hands are wrapped in gauze and taped, the sting has lessened into a throbbing ache. 

mandy sits back on her heels, looking at carl like one might look at a runner in a psych ward. like they’ve all been looking at ian these past weeks. 

“kid...” mickey says finally, and carl’s chest caves. he wants them to stop talking, stop _worrying_. he wants to go back to bed. he wants his brother. “was that, fuck, you know. was that you tryna hurt yourself?” carl feels, suddenly, like every exposed scar on him is glowing bright red.

he’s so fucking embarrassed that he wants to bury his head in his arms and sob. embarrassed that they think that, embarrassed that he doesn’t even _know_ how to answer that. he doesn’t remember what he was thinking holding that plate. he remembers feeling awful, trembly and deep-down wrong, but he doesn’t remember the incident. he just shrugs, avoiding both pairs of eyes. 

mandy breathes out, noisy and scared. carl feels awful in every sense of the word. feels like he might vomit. he can tell mandy and mickey are having a frantic eye conversation over his head. _step right up to another gallagher breakdown in the milkovich house! nothing new here!_

“hey, carl.” mickey’s sort of talking to him like he’s a child, and he can’t really bring himself to be annoyed by it. “let’s go talk to ian, yeah?” 

yeah. carl can handle that. it’s always ian, after all. ian is his favorite. 

—

he’s still asleep when carl walks into the bedroom, but not in the scary, wound-up, fucked-up way. just asleep, on his back, his face open and placidly empty. carl sits down next to him on mickey’s side of the bed. 

he puts a bandaged hand on the bare shoulder of his older brother. his older brother who might be the only one who understands even a shred of the awfulness that’s brewing inside of carl ( _crazy crazy crazy crazy_ ). 

“ian?” he stirs, just a little, opening his eyes so slightly that carl almost can’t tell if he really has. “i think i did something fucked up.”

**Author's Note:**

> sigh, fuck. i love these kids so much. please pleaseee comment! it’s my life force.


End file.
